Being Mindful: Living in the Now by David Tuffley

by David Tuffley

Mindfulness has its roots in Buddhism, though most religions and philosophical traditions have practices that serve to focus your attention in the Now where life is richly-textured, away from the energy-sapping day-to-day worries that occupy so much of our time. There are numerous health benefits for the mindfulness practitioner. At the physical level, mindfulness has been proven by recent research to help reduce stress, lower blood pressure, treat heart disease, reduce chronic pain, help you sleep soundly, alleviate gastro-intestinal problems to name a few. At the mental level, psychotherapists are using mindfulness as an effective therapy. It is showing good results in helping with depression, substance abuse, eating disorders, relationship conflicts, anxiety disorders, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The techniques outlined in this concise, plain-language eBook are easy to understand. Applying them will take some time and energy, but you will be richly rewarded for your efforts. You have nothing lose and everything to gain by learning this ancient healing technique to help you towards a happier, healthier life. WHAT IS MINDFULNESS? Mindfulness or more accurately right mindfulness is an aspect of the noble eight-fold path that is the foundation of Buddhism. The eight-fold path is how you can end your suffering in life. It includes, right view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness and concentration (detail in later section Eight-fold path). Mindfulness is a state of heightened consciousness in which you have cultivated the mental ability to perceive and experience the world around you clearly, and without delusion. Doing this requires you to allow your sense perceptions to be received neutrally, and not thought about too much. For many people, receiving a sense perception triggers a train of thought in which the sensed object is categorised and thought about until a conclusion is reached. This conclusion is the product of complex processing and often bears little resemblance to the external reality that produced it, having been filtered through one’s preconceived ideas. It is a process that occurs automatically and unconsciously most of the time. Right mindfulness is therefore about becoming (a) consciously aware of your mind’s tendency to interpret the world and in the process of interpreting come to distort that reality, and (b) to limit this tendency by simply allowing the world to be what it is without judging it or wishing it were otherwise. If you remove the filters, this new transparency allows you to perceive and experience more of the world and gain greater intuitive insight into the nature of reality. The mindful person becomes the observer their own mind and controls its wayward tendencies. They have developed meta-consciousness, or awareness of consciousness. Neuroscience suggests that this ability to be aware of our own awareness is a function of the newly evolved parts of the human brain (the neo-cortex and frontal lobes). It is unlikely that animals whose brains do not have these structures are capable of meta-consciousness. It appears to be a uniquely human capability. Exercising these higher brain functions does not happen automatically. It must be cultivated. The way it is cultivated is through right mindfulness which is reached through contemplation of the four foundations. The four foundations are mindfulness of (a) the body, (b) feelings (repulsion, neutrality, and attraction), (c) state of mind, and (d) observed phenomena. Approach this endeavour with patience and humility. It is a joyful and immensely worthwhile journey.

Paperback

First published January 29, 2014

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